TheGift73 writes: "Now that The Pirate Bay is being blocked by ISPs in the UK, millions of people have a new interest in accessing the site, even if they didn’t before. The reasons for this are simple. Not only do people hate being told what they can and can’t do, people – especially geeks – love solving problems and puzzles. Unlocking The Pirate Bay with a straightforward proxy is just too boring, so just for fun let’s go the hard way round."

Hentes writes: The internet has made many things easier, but unfortunately this also includes crime: it seems that nowadays not even people wanting to know their future are safe from fraud. Two gipsy fortune tellers are being investigated, after the Romanian police uncovered that they have utilised some extraordinary help in their clairvoyant acts. The pair used information collected from internet search and social networks to gain the trust of their costumers, claiming that they could see their personal data through their crystal ball. In some cases, they also used high-tech surveillance techniques such as hidden cameras and phone tapping. But they didn't stop at merely spying on their victims: their most bizarre case involved a scuba diver dressed as a "Loch Ness monster".The duo are suspected of fraud, illegal wiretapping, and also bribery of the prosecutor

An anonymous reader writes: "Hand me that pitchfork, Olga... and while you're at, devise me up a coping strategy to contend with the existential agony that's been delivered by the wraith of modernity."

techfun89 writes: "According to Planetary Resources co-founder Eric Anderson, a US company has the right to an asteroid and its resources. He also says that its a goal of the US government to enable and promote such commercial activities in space.

This is the United States view on asteroids, but there is a 1967 United Nations Outer Space Treaty that may say otherwise.

"Outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means," states Article 2 of the treaty.

"The UN treaty in essence forbids private ownership of celestial property. According to the treaty, you could not arrive on the Moon or an asteroid and claim it for ownership, at least as a country," according to an attorney Michael Gold for Bigelow Aerospace."

netbuzz writes: "Some say they’re “hilarious,” actually, as this collection of Unix admin tools written by Brendan Gregg is drawing generally rave reviews in social-media circles. The one getting the most laughs is called “maybe.” Gregg explains: “This was back in the days when sysadmins would lock user accounts for being ‘naughty,’ and then unlock them sometime later when they thought the user had learned their lesson. I'm not sure there is an analogue today, since we are so dependent on computing. It'd be like blocking an employee from the Internet for a few days for running bittorrent; I guess they'd learn their lesson, but they'd probably be unable to do their job, too.” (There’s also an unrelated bonus video – viewed almost 800,000 times on YouTube — of Gregg yelling at disk drives.”)"

betterunixthanunix writes: Almost immediately after MegaUpload was shut down, a large number of people complained that they had used MegaUpload for entirely legal file storing and sharing purposes. Apparently, employees of the US government, including the Depart of Justice, were among those users. Kim Dotcom has stated that he is working with the Department of Justice to restore users' access to their files.

An anonymous reader writes: PwnedList is a website launched nine months ago to help users figure out if their account credentials have been hacked. The service crawls public sites where hackers post stolen data and then indexes all the login credentials it finds. As such, if your company or a website you use was hacked, and PwnedList found it, it can tell you. If you want to check yourself, the service is free. If you want PwnedList to alert you when your account credentials have been stolen, however, you’ll have to pay.

An anonymous reader writes: In response to the still-raging MPAA & RIAA, a kind of reverse piracy has arisen. The "Send Them Your Money" campaign urges pirates and landlubbers alike to send scanned images of American currency to these agencies. According to the campaign's webpage, "They've made it very clear that they consider digital copies to be just as valuable as the original." The operation gained fame via sites like Reddit and Tumblr, inspiring citizens of other countries to send their legal tender to the MPAA and RIAA.

wcrowe writes: ""On this day in 1876, the U.S. Patent Office awarded Alexander Graham Bell a patent for his "improvement in telegraphy," or, as we now know it, the telephone (above). This anniversary seems like as good a day as any — well, perhaps even a bit better than the other 365 days this year (leap year!) — to dip into the media frenzy that surrounded its arrival, a 19th century tech event evocative of today's Apple circus. Just kidding. It was nothing like that at all — the telephone, and the reaction to it, rolled out over the course of years, not minutes.""

The Bad Astronomer writes: "News is starting to spread about a small 45-meter-wide asteroid called 2012 DA14 that will make a close pass to Earth on February 15, 2013. However, some of these articles are claiming it has "a good chance" of impacting the Earth. This is simply incorrect; the odds of an impact next year are essentially zero. Farther in the future the odds are unclear; another near pass may occur in 2020, but right now the uncertainties in the asteroid's orbit are too large to know much about that. More observations of DA14 are being made, and we should have better information about future encounters soon."

dsinc writes: Two months ago, an unknown attacker slipped in a Zeus-infected version of Slowloris into the list of DDoS tools that Anonymous has been distributing to its supporters, according to Symantec.t’s not clear how many Anonymous supporters used the infected Slowloris, so there’s no way to gauge how many were (or still are) unknowingly transmitting their own bank account data to a remote server. Security companies have previously Internet users backing Anonymous not to participate in the DDoS attacks because they are breaking the law. Now, Symantec says they “may also be at risk of having their online banking and email credentials stolen.”

ciwak writes: "Many people will hold of which participating in a hobby one of the simplest ways and keep is dynamic and also goodly. It really is exercise that has an additional enjoyable intent. And there's no doubt precisely how well-liked athletics tend to be. They're a little bit part of the Us culture as well as a great a part of several international locations'. It is usually next hardly surprising exactly how well-known sports games are, either. Needless to say, there are many paradoxes as. They are full opposites."